Delhi acid victim's condition deteriorating

The condition of Preeti Rathi, the young New Delhi woman targeted in an acid attack May 2 on the day she arrived here to take up a nurse's job, is deteriorating with the acid eating into her insides, her distraught family said Thursday.

Acid was flung on Preeti, 25, by some unknown people as she got off the from the New Delhi-Mumbai Garib Rath Express at Bandra Terminus on May 2 morning to take up her job as a nurse in the army hospital here.

"She has been put on ventilator as her breathing organs have been damaged. The right lung has collapsed and the left lung is partly functioning," her father Amar Singh Rathi told IANS.

Bombay Hospital medicos attending to her have said the acid entered her oesophagus, windpipe and trachea and Preeti is now on a lung-support machine.

Initially treated for burns and other complications at the Masina Hospital in Byculla, Preeti was shifted to Bombay Hospital, New Marine Lines, last week Saturday.

Rathi said the priority was now to keep her alive and they were praying for her early recovery.

The anguished father last week wrote to Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil and state Director General of Police Sanjeev Dayal demanding that the probe into the acid attack case on his daughter be taken away from the Government Railway Police (GRP).

"We want it to be handed over to either the state Crime Investigation Department of Central Bureau of Investigation as the GRP are not investigating it properly," Rathi said.

He alleged that the GRP had arrested a wrong person and had yet to track down the real culprit responsible for the brutal attack on his daughter.

The family is presently living in accommodation arranged by the Shiv Sena. The Indian Railways has agreed to foot all her medical expenses.

For the last three weeks, Rathi, his wife, their son and two nephews have been on constant vigil by Preeti's bedside as she battles for life.